The Australian standard of living is high as the sky. The number of billionaires in Australia is as high as Mexico. This is the lucky country, second-rate people basking in the riches and innovation first-rate people concocted. The living standard here is amazing. Australia GDP per capita is higher than the United States nominally, but
lower if you adjust it for purchasing power partiy. Australia GDP is on par with any industrialized Western country. Australia's debt as a percentage of Australian GDP is very low compared to the United States.

Australia's Standard Of Living

"Compared to Americans, Australians work less,
earn more, own multiple homes, surf, and travel abroad regularly.
Australia is not the Lucky Country. It's the We've-Got-It-Made Country."
Doug Knell, Doug's Republic
When Australian writer Donald Horne wrote The Lucky Country
in 1964, he was not complimenting his native land.
He meant it ironically. Horne wrote that "Australia is
a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its
luck." More clever nations created wealth using
innovation, technology, brains. Australia's economic
wealth came from whatever valuable minerals it dug out of its
soils and mines.

I marveled when I was in Australia how Australians didn't
seem to work as hard as the people back home in America, yet
they all seemed to own at least one home, were
likely renting out another, had done ample world travel,
were sampling fine wines, and may have only graduated high
school. How do the Australians pull this off?

The luck still hasn't run out if you're average

The Apparent Wealth Of
Australia

Let's do a comparison of Australia with the United States, the country
they're always comparing themselves to, to see how Australia measures up.

A quick glance shows Australians as less wealthy than Americans.
The Australian government admits their people are less productive than
Americans in a well-researched paper found here. There are about
3 times as many billionaires and 5 times as many millionaires in the
United States as there are in Australia if you normalize Australia's
population to be on par with the United States. The Australians
get twice as much annual leave (and a 17.5% bonus on top of their salary
when they take it) but are also, overall, less educated. None of
that stops the country from outscoring the United States on a UN Human
Development Index in 2004.
I don't have much respect for the UN, but I don't disagree with their
ranking of Australia above the U.S. The Australians do
enjoy a higher standard of living than the Americans. Yet how can this be, if the Australians are apparently USD 9,500 poorer per
person?

If you don't adjust the GDP per capita figures for cost of living in
each nation, Australia's GDP per capita is USD 47,400, over USD 500
higher than the United States. Nominally, the Australians are
richer than the Americans per person. Only once the higher cost of
living in Australia is factored in do the Australians rank lower. But
GDP per capita is a very misleading indicator anyway. It divides a
country's total domestic output by the total number of citizens, yet we
all know that each citizen does not provide an equal amount to a
nation's output.
Each millionaire
and billionaire generates far more to a nation's output than the GDP per
capita figure. Because the U.S. has a greater percentage of
millionaires and billionaires than Australia, and these ultra rich as a group possess
much greater wealth in the United States (the combined wealth of the 400 richest
Americans is about double Australia's annual GDP, and the richest Australian would only rank as #131 on the American
rich list), this billionaire/millionaire contribution to national
output is a larger chunk in the United States than it is in Australia.
If we were somehow able to subtract out the millionaire/billionaire
contribution in each country and divide by the total number of
its non-millionaire/billionaire citizens, we'd arrive at a fictitious figure
we'll call the GDPAC, the gross domestic product per average citizen.
This figure would be a more accurate measure of how well
off the average person is in each country. The GDPAC for Australia would
outrank by a large margin the GDPAC for the US.

This it not an academic exercise. The average Australian is better
off. The minimum wage is 50% higher in Australia.
University educations are cheaper. Vacations are longer.
A universal health care regime is in place. Australians don't
watch their taxes funneled abroad to fund costly military ventures
which yield no perceived benefit for the run-of-the-mill citizen.
Australian public debt is only about 25% of GDP; America's is near 100%.
No doubt about it. The harder working Americans are poorer and
constantly getting even poorer. A highly
educated professional and a tycoon will make a lot more money in the
United States, but most citizens of any country do not fall into this
exclusive elite category. That's why they're called average
citizens. Australia caters to the average a helluva lot better
than the U.S. Call Australia the Lucky Country, the Lazy Country, the whatever country. It doesn't matter. The
Australians are surfing their way to an envious lifestyle as the Americans get taxed and raped into the poorhouse.

Is the U.S. standard of living in the toilet?

The United States is known as the land of big business. Whenever I ask someone to name, off the top of their head, 10 world-renowned American companies, they can do so.
When I then ask if they can name five well-known Australian companies, they struggle beyond Qantas. They could better name five famous Australian actors or actresses
than they could five major Australian companies. Despite the United States
being behind many of the world's most recognized businesses (Disney, Apple, Microsoft,
IBM, GE) and the huge revenues these corporations garner, this does not translate into average Americans having a higher standard of living than average Australians.

The Australian standard of living is one of the highest in the world considering how little the Australians have to work for it. The living standard here is amazing. On a nominal basis, Australia GDP per capita is higher than the United States, but
if you adjust for PPP, it's lower. Australia GDP is nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. Australia's debt as a percentage of Australian GDP is very low compared to the United States. Australia deserves its
reputation as the lucky country. The number of billionaires in Australia is something to marvel at. It has 9. Not bad for a country of 22m.